Missouri-Beverly Hillbillies connection

I love surprises and I love learning things about my adopted state Missouri. So imagine my delight when I learned about Missouri’s connection to “The Beverly Hillbillies,” the 1960s hit national television show.

If you’re too young to remember, “The Beverly Hillbillies,” was a rural comedy that ran for eight seasons until 1971 and was the No. 1 television show in its first two seasons, according to this Dec. 4, 2010, article on the CCHeadliner.com website.

The Missouri Connection

The writer of the show Paul Henning was an Independence, Missouri native and his wife Ruth Henning wrote a book about their life in Hollywood. The manuscript was completed in the 1990s, but went unpublished until 2017. A book launch was held in September 2017 in Independence to mark the book’s publication.

A review in the January 2018 issue of the Missouri Historical Review calls the biography a lighthearted chronical of Paul Henning’s career path from “midwestern radio programs to Hollywood television producer and screenwriter.”

The book, “The First Beverly Hillbilly: The Untold Story of the Creator of Rural TV Comedy,” is available at the Columbia Public Library. It is, of course, also available electronically at amazon.com, where it has gotten 4 1/2 stars.

In the television comedy, the main characters, the Clampetts, hailed from the Missouri Ozarks, near Silver Dollar City. Some of the shows were filmed at Silver Dollar City and the shows often featured references to Branson and the area.

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Published by diannaobrien

Journalist. Teacher. Traveler. I'm still driven to find that one last surprising detail, fact or figure, whether it's about frozen food packaging or the history of Columbia, Missouri. I reveal the hidden history, myths and mysteries of CoMo at columbiahistorichomes.com. In 2017, I published a book I wrote with Charles W. Gehrke about his life as an analyst of the moon rocks from the Apollo missions and his founding of ABC Labs, now Eurofins, a global firm. Read more at melonfields.com
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